Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens

This is a German film from 1922 directed by F.W.Murnau.

It's a B&W silent horror film and uses title cards (with an eye-burning cyan background in my version) to explain what's going on in the story. Nosferatu is based on the Dracula story that the team were unable to require the rights to at the time, hence different names, locations, etc. They outright stole it.

After seeing the Herzog/Kinski version of Nosferatu, I think both versions have merits unique to their own. This isn't because this is the original and I feel a 'loyalty' towards it, it's because of the huge time difference. Herzog had a lot more to work with, namely audio. I'd like to see a silent film today. I think good visuals, good acting, and good music aren't exploited enough due to dialogue trying to do the work of literature.

In the 2000 release starring more commercial actors like William Dafoe (played the Green Goblin in the Spider-Man films) the plot follows a fictionalised secret making of this film in which the actor (in the image) Max Schrek really was a vampire and was hired to play the part for realism. That, and the fact Klaus Kinski played the character can tell what sort of inspiration this had on people.

This is hailed as a classic film, hence the remakes and copious amounts of directors being inspired by it. I'm not a film or art student, and therefore I don't go to class and learn how to analyse silent films, the German expressionist movement, etc. This guy will tell you that you need to be if you want your opinion to be of worth (or at least seem to). You'll also need to structure any thoughts and opinions with as many obscure synonyms you can muster.

To spite him I'm going to say I enjoyed the film. I don't care if it's of high artistic quality. The facial makeup was brilliant, the aura and feeling of the film was eerie -- the fact it's a silent B&W film helps -- the way Nosferatu moves all spider-like and very authentically puts later films to shame. I believe this was shot in places like Slovakia, a lot of the scenery is really impressive, especially the Count's castle and surrounding countryside (there's no real emphases on this though), the acting isn't "realistic" because the actors move too fast, the camera's a little shaky, there's no dialogue, there's "ye olde" English title cards.. But all this helps to stylise the film. That style isn't gimmicky, and I won't say "it's more relevant to today" (as reviewers love to say), it gives the film character. To me that is what I appreciate with any form of art.

I don't like vampire or horror flicks because it's a (crap) genre. It's the same with anything: fantasy/sf books, rock music, etc. I'd like to ignore all genres except Good and Bad. This film goes into the former.

Das Boot

Filmed in 1981 by Wolfgang Peterson. This version is 3hrs 20mins long.

I can't really saying anything original about this film. I remember watching "The Neverending Story" when I was a child, and it's surprising the director narrated that as well.

For a film that's thing long, I still couldn't help but feel it was slightly cliched, quite Hollywood. It was better than the recent Israeli film "Lebannon" which was a claustrophobic tank setting. I hated that because it felt like Hollywood.

Obviously if I didn't like this film I wouldn't of watched all of it. You didn't really get to understand this from a German WW2 perspective. There were some emotional responses that could of been portrayed more realistically. I believe this film was very expensive to make.. The most expensive outside of USA and USSR at the time. What does that tell you so far?

It was quite average in most places really. I did think it was going to be more psychological and less on the action, considering its lengthy runtime (but hey, look at LoTR). You're supposed to feel like you're part of the crew, and I can understand where that's coming from, but the characterisation wasn't very good at all, and the dialogue didn't really cover anything you'd expect.

This film doesn't have any gaping holes in it that really make it bad, it manages to pull through and reward you with decent entertainment for over 3 hours but I think the key word there is "entertainment".

"I am categorically against entertainment in cinema: it is as degrading for the author as it is for the audience." - Andrei Tarkovsky

Obviously quite an extreme thing to say but when I think of a film being described as "entertaining" I just think of the hours I had wasted witnessing action or thriller films. On TV I saw a film about some shipsinking and a few survivors making their way through claustrophobic passages... Das Boot didn't totally remind me of that trash, but I think that it doesn't go into the depths of intellectual thought or give itself enough character to be hailed as a piece of art rather than a cliched expensive feature film. That said, you can't call this a bad film at all, if you accept it for what it is.